The Billionaire's Forgiveness (A Winters Love Book 3)

by Rayner, Holly

  I survived the following week wrapped up in a virtual cocoon of the knowledge that Aaron loved me. It was a double-edged sword. Before, I knew that he cared for me and he enjoyed spending time with me. Losing him then would have been heart-wrenching. But now, knowing that he loves me, I think the loss of him would completely devastate me because I would know for sure that I was losing a lifetime of happiness and security.

  I did my work as I always did and in my downtime I moved money around, siphoning off a little here and a little there. I had begun to tell myself that I was doing this as much for Aaron as I was myself. I was safe-guarding his reputation and his heart. If he were to discover my deceit, he may lose all of the ground he’s gained emotionally since he and I started dating at Christmas. I knew that was all just to make me feel better about the awful thing I was doing, but at this point it I had to do whatever worked. Between that and the absolute fact that I intended to pay it all back a little at a time as well, I was able to look at myself in the mirror.

  By the end of the first week I’d had to talk to Igor two more times and I had over half of his money. The two times I had to talk to him made me feel so sleazy. I had always prided myself in the fact that I was a law-abiding citizen who did her best to pay her bills and give back to the community whenever possible. Now I just felt like some cheap, dirty criminal most of the time. I suppose that’s because that’s really what I had become. I can only hope that the fact I intend to pay it all back will redeem my soul in some small way. I was struggling with that thought when I heard Gary’s voice permeating through my anxious haze.

  “Hi Robyn!”

  “Hi Gary, how are you?”

  He shrugged, he looked depressed. “I was wondering if you had a minute. I need some advice.”

  “Um, okay, sure.” I was in my own mixed-up state of mind so I didn’t know how much help I would be, but if it would make him feel better I’d give it a shot.

  “You know Hayley pretty well, right?” Hayley was the newest paid intern in our department. I had actually recommended her for the job. I knew her well, we’d had a lot of college courses together and had become good friends. Hayley recently moved into the city and was looking for a job. We hadn’t had any full-time positions open but we did have the paid intern role. Her student loans were coming due so she was willing to take what she could get. I thought she was so well-qualified that she’d move into the first full-time spot that opened up.

  “Yeah. I know her pretty well, why?” I was getting the feeling that since Gary found out about Aaron and me and had given up hope there; he was beginning to set his sights on Hayley. She’s a beautiful girl, dark haired and petite with big brown eyes that make her look like a doll.

  “I really like her,” he said. “I’ve been trying to work up my nerve to ask her out, but as you well know, I’m not good at reading women. I’m not sure if she would be interested and I’m not sure that I can handle being shot down too many more times. Women keep telling me I need to learn how to take a hint. I guess I need to learn how to recognize them first. Or better yet, learn how to fascinate women so they’ll want to keep me around instead of dropping hints for me to go away.”

  I was trying to suppress a smile. Gary was right, he wasn’t good at reading women at all. I guess it was a step in the right direction that he was beginning to realize that.

  “What would you like me to do, Gary?”

  “Well, I’ve had lunch with her a few times here in the cafeteria and she’s told me that she’s single. She laughs at my jokes and she seems genuinely interested in what I talk about. Do you think I can take all of that as a sign that she’d be interested in going out with me?”

  “Can I be honest with you, Gary? I don’t want to hurt your feelings.”

  “It’s okay,” he said. “I’m not a wimp. I just can’t figure out what it is about me that repels women.”

  I laughed then and said, “You do not repel women, Gary. Here’s the deal, you’re an attractive and successful man, you can be very funny, you’re intelligent and well-informed, but with all that going for you what you seem to be lacking is confidence. One thing that I look for in a man is confidence. I like to see that he knows he has a lot to offer. I don’t want to be with a man that’s going to need me to constantly reassure him. I want a man who feels like I compliment him, not one that thinks he’s “completed” by me. Does that make sense?”

  “So, if I had been more confident and less needy you would have gone out with me?”

  I smiled and said, “Maybe, but there’s no going back. You have to move forward. Hold your head up high and be genuinely proud of yourself and your accomplishments. You have to remember that dating is usually a series of trials and errors. It’s rare that anyone is going to find “the one” right off the bat. If one girl doesn’t work out don’t internalize it. I have a feeling that’s what has happened to your confidence. If you want to ask her out, don’t do it worrying about where it’s going to go beyond the first date. Take her out, have fun and go from there. Your confidence will build each time it works.”

  He was nodding and then he said, “So what about Hayley? Do you think she’ll go out with me?”

  I laughed again, wondering if he processed a word of what I’d just said, “You’ll never know if you don’t ask her, Gary. Just remember that if she says no, it’s not a reflection of who you are. The more you practice that self-confidence, the more it will shine and begin to attract women that are of the caliber you deserve.”

  He stood up and said, “Aaron’s lucky. I hope he knows that.”

  My smile was bittersweet as I said, “I’m the lucky one and I remind myself of that daily.”

  When Gary left the office I clicked back onto what I was working on. I had a flashing email icon and I clicked on it. It was from Aaron and it said, “Thinking of you. I hope you’re having a beautiful day. I love you.”

  I replied to it saying, “Thinking of you, always. I love you too.”

  I got up and closed my office door. For the next half hour I cried for the integrity I was slowly losing. Once it was out of my system, albeit temporarily, I cleaned myself up, pulled up my big girl panties and got back to work.

  ~

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ~

  ROBYN

  Aaron and I had dinner that Friday night at an out of the way Indian restaurant in SoHo. I wasn’t surprised that the staff there seemed to know him as well as everyone else. We sat at a table lower to the ground than my coffee table on big, over stuffed pillows with paisley print and we ate course after course of spicy food, surrounded by the smells of burning incense and the sounds of East Indian music. It was amazing and afterwards I was so stuffed I could barely walk.

  When we got outside I told Aaron, “If you keep feeding me like this I’m going to weigh two hundred pounds soon.” He grinned and gave my backside a gentle squeeze. “There will just be more of you to pat and squeeze and make love to.”

  Laughing I said, “As much as I appreciate the sentiment, I really do need to cut back a little on the eating out. I should start making us dinner at home.”

  He took me by the hand and I thought we were walking to his car. Instead we strolled down the crowded sidewalk underneath the twinkling lights of the always lively clubs of SoHo. He stopped walking and just as I turned my face up towards his, he brought his lips down onto my mouth. It was just a gentle sweet kiss, the kind that worked like an appetizer, they satisfied at the moment, but somehow left you wanting more. He grinned at me again when he pulled his face up.

  “Because I have been feeding you too much and because you’re worried about your weight, although I have no complaints, I’ve decided to work exercise into our dates. Tonight we start with dancing… the best exercise on the market.”

  I looked up at the sign behind him. We were in front of a place called “Aqua.” It was a popular club. I’d gone out with Melissa and Natasha for a girl’s night out here one time. It was a wild night. What it was not wa
s Aaron’s kind of place.

  “You want to go in there?” I asked him.

  “You don’t think it’s a good idea?” he asked.

  I smiled, “I’m just shocked that it was your idea,” I said.

  He took both of my hands in his and he said, “I’m learning to compromise. I want to do things that make you happy too.”

  Damn! I could feel the stupid tears filling up my eyes again. Forcing a quick smile I said, “Thank you, that’s so sweet. Let’s go.”

  The club was huge and loud and posh and packed with fun-loving, good-looking people. There were some at the bar and some at the tables and others bumping and grinding on the dance floor. I looked at Aaron’s face and I could see that this was likely his first time in a place like this. I was amused by it, and touched that he would do something like this just for me at the same time. He took my hand and led me through the crowd and I counted six different women who looked at him like they’d enjoy having him for their next meal. I wanted to stick out my tongue and say, “Ha Ha, he’s all mine.” Immature, I know. He found a high top table for us and as I climbed up on the stool and looked around I wondered if he had planned this. This was no run of the mill SoHo club. This was one of the newer ones and they specifically catered to the “upper class” party crowd. I guess it didn’t matter if he’d researched it; it was a sweet gesture either way.

  The pulsating music filled my ears as Aaron went to the bar to get us a drink and I bobbed my leg up and down and rocked my head to the beat. I was again surprised when he came back, sat down the drinks and led me out to the dance floor. He pulled me into his arms just as that song ended and a slow song filled the room. The floor was so crowded that we could hardly do much more than sway, but with my body pressed tightly into his, I didn’t need to move. He had his hand resting on my lower back and as we danced, he slid it down to the curve of my hip and let it rest there. Making the evening even more surprising and extra sexy, he put his lips to my ear and sang as we danced. It was obvious that he didn’t know the song and he was making up the words as he went along but that made it all the better. He was having fun. Aaron Winters had learned to have fun and I like to think I at least helped him get there. Maybe after it came out that I was embezzling money from his company that would be something he could remember me by. Damn! I wasn’t going to think about that tonight. A second slow song came on as the first one ended and he didn’t miss a beat. The only thing that changed position was the hand that had been resting on my back. He slid it down slowly and let it land on my right cheek and every so often as we swayed to the music, he would give it a squeeze.

  He used his other hand to brush the skin on my arm gently up and down. He let it land on the back of my neck underneath my hair and he had his mouth close to my ear as he whispered, “You feel so good.”

  “Mm,” I said, “You feel me so good.” I had my hands on his arms and I squeezed his hard biceps as I said it. He let out a soft moan in my ear and then suddenly I felt his tongue there and my whole body did a little spasm thing. He had the uncanny ability to make me forget that the world outside of the walls we were in even existed. I think if I could spend every moment in his arms like this I would forget that Igor existed at all.

  We danced and drank until the early hours of the morning. It was the single most “fun” night we’d ever had. We have a lot of “nice” ones and “entertaining” ones… but straight up “fun” was hard for Aaron, so the fact that he’d had so much of it made it that much greater for me. I can honestly say now too that I saw Aaron Winters in a state I’m sure not many others had witnessed… with a good buzz going on from the tequila shots he was doing with his beers and shaking his butt to modern pop music. He was so drunk in fact that he had to call and wake Jeffrey to pick us up. He passed out on the way home so after Jeffrey got him up to his apartment and I tucked him in nice and cozy I had Jeffrey take me home. As much as I loved going to sleep and waking up in his arms, I was scared to death to be there lately when the phone Igor gave me might ring at any time.

  Aaron and I continued to see each other a few days a week and I continued to put on a happy front. It wasn’t hard when I was with Aaron; he had the ability to make me forget that anything or anyone else existed. The hard part was fighting the guilt when he looked at me with reverence and respect in his eyes, or those quiet times when my mind would wander back to my troubles and he would catch me staring off into space and ask what was wrong. I would try to smile and deny that there was anything out of the ordinary going on. I know that he didn’t believe me, but I told myself that soon it would all be over and things would be so normal he would forget about my couple weeks of moodiness.

  By the end of the second week of my “embezzlement” I had managed to amass seventy-five thousand dollars. I went by the bank on Friday and withdrew the last of it from the account I had created for it. I left just enough in to keep the account open. An account that was opened and then closed in just a couple of weeks would really send up red flags. I sat in the dark in my apartment that night trying not to listen to the guilty whispers of the seven hundred and fifty, one hundred dollar bills in the bag underneath my bed. I never fell asleep that night. I sat wide awake alternately telling myself I was only doing what I had to do and cursing myself for what I was doing. I finally fell asleep around five a.m. When I woke up I knew it was time… it was time to call Igor and get this over with once and for all.

  I called him on Saturday morning and he answered on the first ring.

  “Hello baby! I was expecting your call.”

  “I have the money,” I told him.

  “I knew you could do this. You make me so happy.”

  “I’m not concerned about making you happy,” I told him. “Tell me where to meet you and I will be there. All I’m interested in is making this and you, go away. Bring the marriage certificate, Igor, the original.”

  He laughed and said, “My sexy girl has grown up into a feisty young woman, I’m so proud.”

  “Shut up! You don’t get to be proud. You don’t even know me and I am not “yours” in any way. Stop making your lewd sexual comments too. You make me nauseous. Tell me where to meet you or I will hang up and go to the police.” That was the other option I had considered. I knew that reporters would be standing by for that kind of information though and again, it would reflect poorly on Aaron who was completely innocent of any wrong-doing here. In other words, it was an empty threat.

  Igor knew that as well as I did and he laughed again, I hated the sound of it. It was strange that the sound of a laugh can make you so angry. He let the silence hang between us for several seconds.

  “There is a diner on fifty-Seventh Street called, “Mauve’s”. I see you there at two o’clock. I bring what you want, you bring what I need.” Then he hung up. I looked at the time, it was ten o’clock now. I had four hours to wait. I realized after one hour passed that it was going to be a really long day. There was one more anxiety attack on the horizon and it hit hard. I fought through it and managed to be ready and get to the restaurant ten minutes early. Igor was already there, seated in a booth at the far end of the diner next to a window. I swallowed hard and had to force my legs to move and walk towards him. The bag on my shoulder was really big and really heavy and as I walked towards him I let myself imagine that suddenly undercover officers would jump out of their seats with their guns drawn and order me down on the floor. They would find me red-handed with all of the money and Igor would slip out the back door. Aaron would be so angry that he would never visit me in jail and by the time I got out of jail he would have that beautiful wife who wasn’t me and two point five kids. My imagination was beginning to get out of hand.

  “Hello beautiful,” Igor said when I got next to the table. I dropped down onto the seat across from him and hoped that the look on my face was relaying my distaste for him and his terms of endearment. Before either of us could speak further, the waitress was there with the coffee pot. Igor had a half empty breakfas
t plate in front of him. The rude thug ate without me. It wasn’t like I was going to join him for a meal, but it was bad manners for him to not ask. It was one more point against him.

  “Can I get you anything, hon?” the waitress asked me.

  “No, coffee is fine,” I told her. Once she was gone I said, “This isn’t a social meet. I want to finish our business and get out of here. I don’t ever want to see you again. Did you bring it?”

  He grinned a nasty grin and laid a manila folder on the table. I reached for it.

  Igor’s gaze pierced me as he asked, “What about you? Did you bring what you were supposed to, or did you only come here to insult me?”

  With a sigh, I flipped open the top of the bag so he could see the cash inside. I closed it quickly and said, “I want to see the document first.” He opened the folder and inside of it was a State of New York official marriage license with our names on it. I reached over and felt the seal with my fingertips. It felt real, all I could do was say a silent prayer that he wasn’t scamming me. While I was doing that, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a gold ring. It was the ring that he’d used as a wedding ring when we got married. He laid it on top of the folder. I picked up the bag and handed it over by passing it under the table to him. Then, I put the cellphone down in front of him and picked up the folder and the ring and without saying another word to him I left the restaurant. Once I was outside, not arrested and with the original marriage certificate in hand I felt a wave of relief wash over my body. I let out the breath I’d been holding for two weeks. It was over…